The UVA Emails and Confirmation Bias: Seek and Ye Shall Find

The UVA Emails and Confirmation Bias: Seek and Ye Shall Find

You have to hand it to the American Tradition Institute. Unlike Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, they’ve found a way to get the University of Virginia to release at least some emails and other documents from climate researcher Michael Mann’s time working there–by using freedom of information requests for “public” documents. (News here, scathing Washington Post editorial here.)

The University of Virginia is complying, although its president says they will take advantage of every exemption allowed by the law. Still, though, it sounds as though a lot of documents are going to be released. So what will happen next?

The American Tradition Institute–and indeed, conservative climate skeptics across the board–have gone seeking scandal among the ranks of climate scientists. That’s what Ken Cuccinelli did. That’s what happened in “ClimateGate.” That has been the strategy for some time.

So does anyone think that that, whatever these documents say, they are not going to be treated as a scandal by those who went searching for them?

Confirmation bias tells us what will happen. Those who went seeking went in with a theory–that wrongdoing has been done. They all believe “ClimateGate,” shown by multiple investigations to be a fake scandal, was actually a real one. So that is their premise.

They will therefore read whatever emails they receive and find wrongdoing in them. They will find politics. They will find closed-mindedness and bias. And who knows what else they will find–but it will all be made to look bad.

Will any of the charges be valid? I don’t know, although I seriously doubt it. One thing we can be sure of, though, is that things will be taken out of context and used selectively. That’s what happened in “ClimateGate” and that’s what will happen again.

Conservatives, in short, are targeting Mann and expecting to find another ClimateGate scandal. And I am watching conservatives and also predicting that they will find another ClimateGate “scandal.” There’s only the slightest difference between our views: The quotation marks.

You’re also told that you should eat your crusts and that AGW is a scam. I guess you’ll believe anything that you’ve been told as long as you like to hear it.

You can’t chose to be off-grid, so therefore much of your money is spent on coal and oil. You can’t chose to avoid taxes (unless you’re really rich like the Kochs) but the government is still giving billions a year to oil, coal, gas and nuclear. They’re still giving billions away to the richest people on the planet. Money you paid in.

“I am told the US government withdraw funding from CRU last year why ?”

Isn’t democracy in a republic beautiful? Who could possibly be against freedom of information?

As for confirmation bias the latest offenders have been Bill McKibben and journalists (except Revkin) who write articles expressing their belief that tornadoes must be tied to climate change. In my state at least the state climatologist posted a thorough review of tornado data and concluded that tornadoes have occurred, “….without an indication of any underlying climate change.”

The Idso’s don’t like it either. Nor does Wegman, McIntyre, Watts or Inholfe.

And I don’t like it when someone else spends my taxes when they’re not willing to chip in their quid’s worth.

And Revkin has been guilty of far far FAR more egregious lies to you than merely “tornadoes will get higher with climate change” which isn’t to say that you’ll be able to tell if that’s already happened, is it.

McKibben was the one using the dead bodies of those who died from these naturally occurring weather storms as his podium to make false claims that such tornadoes are due to climate change. My state climatoligist posted a complete analysis of the tornadoe data to conclude that tornadoes occurred,”without an indication of any underlying climate change.” None of the other people you mentioned are using naturally occurring weather tragedies to promote their ideology that I’m aware of.

I note you don’t have the guts to give the link to what was said, but here you go:

“It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing.”

Sundance, in a dance to change the truth to suit his purposes:

“McKibben was the one using the dead bodies of those who died from these naturally occurring weather storms as his podium to make false claims that such tornadoes are due to climate change”

Hmm.

Bill: No, that doesn’t mean a thing.

Sundance: make false claims that such tornadoes are due to climate change.

Now you can see the denialist MO in action again. Lie openly, brazenly, knowing that many people can’t be troubled to find out for themselves (which is why they so often say “look for yourself!”: to kid-on that nobody will actually do so) and so their lies will go unnoticed and believed by other denialists.

Also note, you can get that statement on this very site, so it’s not like sundance couldn’t check for himself…

You are frightening me. Either you are on drugs, a hormonally charged 13 year old or you are mentally challenged. Those are the only explanations for someone to be unable to recognize the irony in McKibben’s lunatic opinion piece after the storms and while the bodies of the dead were still warm. He is no better than the Grist moron who after the April tornadoes ripped through the South, wrote that the Southerners had it coming because they were deniers.

You are free to believe McKibben’s lunatic rant which in essence suggests that all one need to do is look at the tornado damage to recognize climate change, but good luck trying to impose such cultist beliefs on the sane people. The reality is that your cultist approach is failing and the more that cultists like you keep shouting “denier” in everyone’s face the more people will recognize your fanaticism and tribal cultism.

‘…like you keep shouting “denier” in everyone’s face the more people will recognize your fanaticism and tribal cultism.’

Ah! A tone troll trying to Curry favour with his kochhead masters.

AS for Bill McKibben’s piece that included mention of tornadoes he was only totting up the series od deadly events from arfound the globe which are symptomatic of a warming world, and the list was incomplete at that.

But of course in the face of reality you ‘deniers-liars pants on fires’ have to spin it around like a leaf in a tornado until the message is unrecognisable in the background noise.

How many more people across the world have to die before you toadies understand that next time it could be you or yours for the chop.

You are the one who has a faith being tested, a faith pinned on phantoms in the air.

McKibben’s view was soundly refuted by Revkin, the NOAACSI team, the Oklahoma storm center my state climatologist and many other independent groups. He and you have no peer reviewed evidence based science to support “deadly events are symptomatic of a warming world”. This is a patently false claim. I am not even aware of a means of scientifically testing the claim, which was a point that was made at a recent Yale 360 climate forum article (I read alot). At that forum some of the climate scientists indicated it could take another 30 years or more before they could know if warming is exacerbating extreme weather events.

In the case of floods and storms for example there has been far greater life loss in the past and when the data is adjusted for population density (based on deaths per million of population) and location bias (greater numbers of people living in high risk areas), you and McKibben haven’t a sound leg to stand on. Again calling people trolls and deniers without knowledge of the scientific facts is a losing tactic in trying to convince people of your position.

You’re saying Revkin is the one using the dead bodies of those who died from these naturally occurring weather storms as his podium to make false claims that such tornadoes are caused by climate change.

Here again is McKibben’s words:

“It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing.”

If Revkin refuted that he believes that AGW caused those deaths.

“In the case of floods and storms for example there has been far greater life loss in the past ”

Now you’re just being silly because the words you’ve copied and pasted are meant to be part of the irony used by McKibben. You took them out of context and if you are truly unable to read and comprehend the full context of McKibben’s article you should follow the advice of Abraham Lincoln, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

Here is brand new scientific documentation supporting my arguments.

CONCLUSIONS. The analysis of 22 disaster loss
studies shows that economic losses from various
weather-related natural hazards, such as storms,
tropical cyclones, floods, and small-scale weather
events (e.g., wildfires and hailstorms), have increased
around the globe. The studies show no trends in
losses, corrected for changes (increases) in population
and capital at risk, that could be attributed to anthropogenic
climate change.

http://www.ivm.vu.nl/en/Images/bouwer2011_BAMS_tcm53-210701.pdf

To recap this was a comprehensive review of the 22 previous most cited studies to evaluate methodology and conclusions of those methodologies. The Bouwer study concludes that there are, “no trends in
losses, corrected for changes (increases) in population
and capital at risk, that could be attributed to anthropogenic
climate change.” This is what I had stated in above posts.

Here is the 2010 study by Chris Landsea etal. (former IPCC lead author) explaining how the anthropoegenic signal that had been associated with hurricanes is erroneous.

“Records of Atlantic basin tropical cyclones (TCs) since the late nineteenth century indicate a very large upward trend in storm frequency. This increase in documented TCs has been previously interpreted as resulting from anthropogenic climate change. However, improvements in observing and recording practices provide an alternative interpretation for these changes: recent studies suggest that the number of potentially missed TCs is sufficient to explain a large part of the recorded increase in TC counts. This study explores the influence of another factor—TC duration—on observed changes in TC frequency, using a widely used Atlantic hurricane database (HURDAT). It is found that the occurrence of short-lived storms (duration of 2 days or less) in the database has increased dramatically, from less than one per year in the late nineteenth–early twentieth century to about five per year since about 2000, while medium- to long-lived storms have increased little, if at all. Thus, the previously documented increase in total TC frequency since the late nineteenth century in the database is primarily due to an increase in very short-lived TCs.”

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI3034.1

If you go to the NOAA website on hurricanes you will find that an international workshop of cyclone experts was convened for the expressed purpose of determining if an anthropoegenic signal could be found in cyclone data. The consensus was that given all scientific considerations no conclusion to support an anthroegenic signal for cyclones could be found. The workshop experts also found an energy limit for cyclones based on the physics used in their models which will likely be a factor in adaptation for future storms. I am stunned by your lack of knowledge on the science. I assure you that if you spent less time commenting at this blog shouting “denier” and read climate journals and spent time at the physics blogs you would be more open minded and not so prone to your current feedback loop of confirmation bias.

Oddly enough, people would rather NOT wait for a disaster to happen before admitting they could happen.

This is why, for example, people buy insurance BEFORE they need to claim, or why we lock up criminals AFTER they’ve committed a crime (when it’s too late to undo the crime done, ergo the only reason for doing so in a Justice system is to avoid further crimes they may commit).

But I guess as long as it’s someone else paying the price of his selfishness, sundance doesn’t care if the world goes to hell in a handbasket. He’s got his, suckers.

“Ike,” hit Texas and caused at least 30 deaths, thousands more evacuated their homes, and millions lost power in Houston alone. Ike hit the island city of Galveston Bay the hardest, knocking out water, power, and sewer lines. Despite requests to evacuate, at least 15,000 people remained in Galveston amid worsening sanitary conditions.

there is a lot of text written here and some other poster asked if there are any sceptical scientists not on an “oil-paycheck”.
I admit, that I didn’t read everything, but I want to write a few lines about S. McIntyre, who’s efforts where smeared by you!

First about his data collection, at wiki you can find:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy
“In a corrigendum published on 1 July 2004, Mann, Bradley and Hughes acknowledged that McIntyre and McKitrick had pointed out errors in proxy data that had been included as supplementary information to MBH98”
This tells me something was wrong with the data before and McIntyre’s FOIs are indeed justified and the science advanced because of him.

And, if you want to learn more about facts, you might consider checking out his website .. sometimes he has some real jewels there, for example this week a piece about the hockey stick (again):
He shows how the statistical weights change if you change your analysis of the proxies .. there are a few different methods out there by now, but it always comes down to the fact, that you only get a hockey stick, if some of your proxies (mainly bristlecone pines) gain too much weight in the analysis.

Fraud is a criminal activity that should not go unpunished just because you like the fraudsters agenda. So if I were to give billions of your taxes to prop up a dictatorship thats OK ? Even if they spend that money on arms to keep their own people down?

If its a fraud they should be punished…thats what the rule of law is about.

You cannot justify a fraud by saying ‘well…the rockefellers paid no taxes last year so I’m ok to defraud the tax payer’.

Why are so many of the ones denying the science calling it all “faith” the ones who go to church so much?

And they’re always banging on about “faith” “church” “belief”.

What’s also odd is that they’ll defend their faith with “you can’t be so mean about religions”, then accuse “science is your religion” then go ahead and be as mean (or more so) to the science. Apparently among the other elements of the periodic table, Irony also passed them by…

“Direct observations find that CO2 is rising sharply due to human activity. Satellite and surface measurements find less energy is escaping to space at CO2 absorption wavelengths. Ocean and surface temperature measurements find the planet continues to accumulate heat. This gives a line of empirical evidence that human CO2 emissions are causing global warming.”

A large body of evidence supports the conclusion that human activity is the primary driver of recent warming. This evidence has accumulated over several decades, and from hundreds of studies. The first line of evidence is our basic physical understanding of how greenhouse gases trap heat, how the climate system responds to increases in greenhouse gases, and how other human and natural factors influence climate.

The second line of evidence is from indirect estimates of climate changes over the last 1,000 to 2,000 years. These estimates are often obtained from living things and their remains (like tree rings and corals) which provide a natural archive of climate variations. These indicators show that the recent temperature rise is clearly unusual in at least the last 1,000 years.

The third line of evidence is based on comparisons of actual climate with computer models of how we expect climate to behave under certain human influences. For example, when climate models are run with historical increases in greenhouse gases, they show gradual warming of the Earth and ocean surface, increases in ocean heat content, a rise in global sea level, and general retreat of sea ice and snow cover. These and other aspects of modeled climate change are in agreement with observations.

Anyone who thinks that any of the official investigations and reports into the leaked CRU emails and data was unbiased enough to have any credibility, and anything but a whitewash, needs a serious reality check.

Anyone who is halfway competent can perform an independent verification of the CRU’s global temperature results using publicly-available temperature data and free, open-source software development tools.

All of the temperature data needed to validate the CRU’s work are freely available and can be downloaded by anyone who can figure out how to use a web-browser or ftp client.

The global temperature record is so spatially oversampled that getting results similar to the CRU’s can easily be done without using any of the CRU’s supposedly “hidden” data.

The temperature gridding/averaging process is well documented and straightforward, and can be coded up from scratch in a few days (at most) by a competent programmer.

I know this for a fact because I did all this myself, and in my spare time over just a few days.

The fact that none of the deniers who have been attacking the CRU for the past year and a half have been able to do what a single competent programmer/analyst could easily do in a few days tells us all we need to know about the competence of the global-warming denier community.

1) We have to investigate the scientists for fraud
2) investigation happens and find no fraud
3) The investigation was flawed!!!!

So no actual proof of fraud, just a continued whine that it MUST be fraud.

Why? Because otherwise capitalism has caused a problem and the randians WILLNEVERENTERTAINTHATTHOUGHT. The god-botherers won’t since GODWON’TLETTHEMDIE.

Just faith, faith, faith.

Just like the creationists complaining that there is a gap in the fossil record therefore evolution is wrong (and with a logical leap of gargantuan proportions, that means creation is right and they don’t have to prove it). Then, when an intermediate fossil form is found: “There are now TWOGAPS!!! The edifice of Darwinism is crumbling!!!”.

Just as great a bunch of morons. Just as great a deception.

Denialists, creationists and flat-earthers. All cut from the same cloth.

And yet, repeatedly, the actual science has been tested and tested again. The only people to claim fault in the science have been, in turn, found to be financially biased or lacking credibility, and their results full of errors.

“I’m not a meteorologist. All I know is 90 percent of the scientists say climate change is occurring. If 90 percent of the oncological community said something was causing cancer we’d listen to them.” – Jon Huntsman, in an interview with Time, on whether he believes in climate change.

It’s ironic to see the denialist echo chamber in action here, of all places. They have clearly concluded that their “climategate” tactics have been so successful in derailing any action to constrain the carbon industries that they are going to jump on blogs like this that might undermine the legitimacy of such tactics. It’s Climate Cover-Up in action! They roll in like a wave, swamping the message, then roll back to WUWT, awaiting their next assignment.

There’s no point in engaging these “sceptics” in debate, because that’s not why they’re here. They are representing vested interests, using finely honed techniques which are difficult to counter. There’s too much scientific illiteracy in the general population (which obviously includes politicians), and a natural resistance to accept the consequences, even if they believed what the climatologists are saying. I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to get a grip is to relentlessly promote the upside of a new green economy, while portraying the deniers as Luddites.

Indeed, Keith, but I think there is mileage in pointing out to members of the general public that these guys are idiots. Most times though they do our work for us, via self-demonstration of the point! Just keep showing ‘em up for what they are is my advice.

Dont know about the rest, but I just find this irrelevent little blog fun.
Its always fun to poke sticks a religious zealots and see how they excited they get.
They just keep blathering on with the same old debunked dogma and show with every comment that AGW truely is a Faith Based Cult rather than a legitimate science.

Like their silly attempts to assert that CO2 is not plant food.
Every high school grads knows full well that it is, but they keep trying.

Oh well…… Enjoy the fun while it lasts. there is not much life left in the scam.

“Carbon dioxide is plant food. Every gigatonne we release helps feed the world. We should celebrate that!”

Go tell Joplin, Missouri about the benefits of wind. And the cities along the Mississippi River about how water is the stuff of life in our world. Nitrogen is also essential for life. Go sit in a 100% nitrogen atmosphere.

Balance, sir. Systems require balance. I am a high school grad, and I know quite well that too much of anything, including “plant food”, is neither natural nor good for the system.

In a sense, the deniers are right. Not only is CO2 necessary for plants to grow, it is the most important element in our world. We, and all of life is based on the amazing ability of carbon to form compounds essential to life.

And that is exactly why messing up the short term carbon cycle, and upsetting the balance in that cycle, that has held for thousands if not millions of years, is not a a good idea.

Eric Roston wrote a book called “The Carbon Age”. Read it.

And welcome to the anthropocene.

Off topic, but I wish commentors would stop using anonymous. Can’t you make up screen names? It is very confusing when several people on one board are all using anonymous as their screen name.

‘And, if you want to learn more about facts, you might consider checking out his website ..’

Of course on his own website McIntyre is entitled to his own ‘facts’, shame that these don’t alter the the conclusions on climate change by 97% of climate scientists and which are drawn using all relevant evidence, not just a few cherries picked here and there.

‘He shows how the statistical weights change if you change your analysis of the proxies .. there are a few different methods out there by now, but it always comes down to the fact, that you only get a hockey stick, if some of your proxies (mainly bristlecone pines) gain too much weight in the analysis.’

It would seem that McIntyre’s statistics rarely stand up to scrutiny by those who know a thing or three about the subject, as DeepClimate and Tamino have pointed out. And the egg flying towards McIntyre’s face in the wake of the Wegman brouhaha is something else.

You cannot trust anything McIntyre says. OK, he discovered one small flaw in one series which had no effect at all on the overall reconstruction of temperatures using a range of proxies. Your ‘mainly bristlecone pines’ is way off base.

I could offer more, much much more but to give more idea on the silly antics of the Big Mac ask him why, as we know, he had the data all along, that he launched a blizzard of FOI requests from the CRU rather than just going through the normal scientific channels.

There seems to be a lot of astroturfing around here.Is the country of freedom being turned into a big blurring machine? These lobbies misuse the ideals of the freedom of speech: does this include the right to tamper with facts? How come trying to smear someone can replace scientific evidence? Even though someone has her or his various biases, the issue is not her or his biases concerning politics or private life but whether there is scientific evidence or not provides by her or his work. This can only be assessed by real peers and understood by people with some scientific education . Incidentally, the Vatican scientific committee has just approved of the work of real climate scientists: why should this have less clout than what is being done by some industrial and political lobbies with their own biases?
Tampering with science, just to delay the necessary economic and political adjustments, for the sake of money is really shocking…

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.

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In Part II of our intimate interview with Professor Michael Mann he tells of the exact moment he fully acknowledged humans were driving climate change – and how his conversion was thanks to the invention of the colour printer. Read Part I here. The interview forms part of our Epic History of climate denial.

Michael Mann, the scientist behind the climate change hockey stick graph, began his PhD at the...